Faces of Meth

Faces of Meth is a project of the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office. This project began when a deputy in the Corrections Division Classification Unit, Deputy Bret King, put together mug shots of persons booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center. There are rollover images on this site that allows you to see what happens to someone after 3 months, 2.5 years or 1.5 years of methamphetamine use.

Methamphetamine is a very addictive stimulant drug that affects the central nervous system. It is a Schedule II stimulant, which means it has a high potential for abuse and is available only through a prescription that cannot be refilled. It's cheap, it's easy to buy and it packs a bigger punch than cocaine. Methamphetamine abusers find it hard to read expressions on people’s faces and therefore struggle to detect emotion in others, a new joint study at Australian Catholic University (ACU National) has found.

Dr Peter Rendell, Associate Professor of Psychology at ACU National, postgraduate student Magdalena Mazur and Julie Henry from the University of NSW tested 20 adults with an average history of four years of methamphetamine (MA) abuse on measures of social reasoning. These 20 adults were screened from more than 100 MA users who had been formally diagnosed with MA dependence, were not dependent on any other drug and did not have a medical condition.